Separate courtrooms for children under 18

There is a need for all children witnesses under the age of 18 to testify in separate court- rooms without the presence of an audience or officials except an intermediary to assist the child and a video camera.

Facilitator of a workshop on child friendly court structures and procedures held in Maseru this week, Mrs. Riekie Schoeman, speaking on the role of intermediaries, said children witnesses should not even know that their parents are inside the court because they would then be too scared to talk about sexual matters.

Prosecutors and attorneys are also not supposed to be near the child because they always use technical and negative language that threatens witnesses, while some parents are likely to scream at the children when they
give evidence especially if the case involves a parent, Mrs. Schoeman said.

Intermediaries are people who sit with a child in a separate room and their role is to help the child to understand legal and court procedures and lessen stress to enable the child to speak freely. The intermediary can be a medical practitioner, psychiatrist, social worker, teacher, psychologist, police or probation officer.

Mrs. Schoeman said it is the responsibility of  the intermediary to rephrase difficult legal language into simple statements to avoid confusing the child and that it is important for intermediaries to meet a child before the
trial and go over with the child the court procedures as well as ways to answer questions.

She encouraged intermediaries to use anatomical dolls with prominently displayed body parts to enable the child to explain the sexual actions if they do not have the appropriate words to explain those actions before court.

"If the child is crying, refusing to respond to questions or not comfortable with the memories of the incident, the intermediary should ask for a short adjournment to give the child witness a break," she said.

Presenting the role of professionals in the Children's Protection and Welfare Bill of 2003, Dr. Itumeleng Kimane said the bill recognize that children are vulnerable and therefore they always need special protection
and guidance.

Dr. Kimane said there is a need to ensure that professionals who are involved in children's cases should have special skills and training especially in handling children and be able to deal with children's concerns bearing in mind their best interests.

"The professionals who are directly involved with cases of children are magistrates or judges, prosecutors, social workers, probation  officers as well as intermediaries," she said.

She appealed to the professionals to ensure the courts are child-friendly as it is well known that courts are very adult and scary places because of intimidation and frustrations caused by some court professionals.

The workshop was organized by the Law Reform Commission as part of preparation of the implementation of the Children's Protection and Welfare Bill of 2003 that emanated after realizing that the 1980 Children's Protection Act was inadequate in protecting vulnerable children and therefore its implementation was inefficient over the years.

Participants at the workshop are magistrates, prosecutors, social workers, probation officers as well as representatives of non governmental organizations (NGOs) working with children.

13 January 2004